Unlocking Team Performance: The Capability-Motivation-License Framework
- Jessica Hall
- Sep 7
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 8
If you’re frustrated with team performance, Harvard Business School’s Ryan Buell suggests you look at three key areas: capability, motivation, and license.
Do they have the skills?
Are they energized to do the work?
Do they have permission to act?
This Capability-Motivation-License (CML) Framework highlights that organizational performance gaps often stem from one (or more) of these limitations. It’s a useful diagnostic tool. So when your team is slow, stalled, or scattered, this is what you should be looking for.
But there’s a fourth factor that quietly shapes them all, and I’ll go over that later.
Capability: Do They Have the Skills to Deliver Team Performance?
Capability refers to the raw technical or functional ability to do the job. This includes hard skills, experience, and the judgment to apply them in context. According to McKinsey’s State of AI Survey, 56% of organizations cite a lack of internal talent as a barrier to delivering digital transformation. A recent Gartner study found that 64% of IT executives say the tech talent shortage is the barrier keeping them from adopting emerging technologies.
How It Shows Up
Missed deadlines or quality issues
Long onboarding times
Frequent rework
Confusion around core tools, tech, or processes
Example
Volkswagen’s Cariad (2020–2025): The internal software division couldn’t deliver on an ambitious unified OS due to insufficient engineering talent and agile experience. Result? Two-year delays, code chaos, and cybersecurity gaps.
How to Diagnose It
Conduct a skills audit. What critical capabilities are missing end to end? Sometimes we focus on just one piece, like engineering, instead of looking at the whole process of onboarding and supporting customers. Where are you relying on luck or heroic effort? Are you training, coaching, or hiring with intention, or just hoping people “figure it out”?
Motivation: Are They Energized to Do the Work?
Motivation is the internal drive to contribute, solve problems, and push through the hard parts. It's about energy, ownership, and connection—not just effort. Motivation often comes from mastery, purpose, customer connection, and recognition.
At companies like Google, Apple, and Meta, recent internal surveys (2023–24) revealed up to 80% of technologists reported being demotivated, citing burnout, lack of recognition, and disconnection from purpose. After layoffs, this gets worse: people report feeling “invisible” and emotionally disengaged, even while delivering tasks.
How It Shows Up
Passive participation
Low engagement in meetings
Missed opportunities or unspoken ideas
Emotional withdrawal or burnout
Examples
Post-layoff malaise: “I could disappear for a day and no one would notice.” This sentiment is common in teams hit by layoffs or cultural instability.
Startup drift: In early-stage tech, burnout often stems from unclear goals, firefighting, and a lack of feedback loops, leading to engineers mentally checking out.
How to Diagnose It
Ask whether people understand the objective. Do they feel connected to the customer problem? Can they see how their work contributes to a win that matters?
License: Do They Feel Empowered to Act?
License refers to the trust, autonomy, and support to make decisions and move things forward without needing constant approval. Buell defines license as a necessary condition for performance: “Employees perform best when they’re trusted to make decisions at the moment of impact.” However, he also notes that license without clarity leads to chaos, not empowerment.
How It Shows Up
Slow decisions or endless escalations
Micromanagement and over-control
Risk avoidance
Bottlenecks in basic processes
Examples
Micromanaged teams: When every line of code or design tweak needs sign-off, developers stop thinking proactively. Eventually, they stop thinking altogether.
Legacy organizations with approval overload: In some digital transformations, internal teams have ideas but can’t implement them without sign-off from five layers up. That’s not innovation; that’s a stall.
How to Diagnose It
Listen closely: Are teams “coloring within the lines”? Do they feel stuck, or are people grumbling about having their hands tied? Are they taking initiative or waiting for instructions?
Direction: The Critical Ingredient
Direction is what ties everything together. Without a clear sense of where you’re headed and why:
You can’t agree on the right capabilities to build or hire.
People lose motivation because their efforts don’t connect to something meaningful.
Teams hesitate to take action because they don’t feel they truly have license. Every decision feels like a risk without alignment on what “good” looks like.
Direction connects the work to the bigger picture. It strengthens motivation by giving people purpose. It provides license by making priorities explicit and enabling confident decisions. And it clarifies the capabilities that actually matter.
How It Shows Up
Effort everywhere, progress nowhere
Constant shifts in focus
Strategy du jour
Lots of busy work
Why It Matters
Without direction, motivation fades and license breaks. People hesitate not because they don’t care, but because they don’t know where to aim.
How to Diagnose It
Ask five team members: “What are we trying to achieve this quarter?” If you get five different answers, you don’t have direction. You have drift.
The Takeaway
Before you jump to solutions, diagnose the real problem. What looks like laziness might be a lack of license. What feels like disconnection might stem from a lack of direction. Get this right, and capability, motivation, and license all have the space to grow.
